John Legend Helped Pay for These Students' School Lunches, and You Can Too

An astonishing number of children are fed every day by programs that provide free and reduced-price meals for kids in America. In the United States, a child in a family of four living on less than $32,000 per year can get school lunch for free, and a kid whose family lives on $45,000 per year can get it at a reduced price. More than half the students in the country fall into one of those two categories.

Even with that help, though, too many students struggle to afford food. A family of four living on $45,000 a year might still have trouble coming up with lunch money, even at a reduced rate—and a family living on $46,000 would be expected to pay full fare. It should come as no surprise, then, that more than three quarters of all school systems have kids with unpaid lunch bills.

If a kid's family falls into lunch debt, some schools have turned to "lunch shaming" to get the family to pony up. In some schools, instead of a hot lunch, the student is given a paper bag with a cheese sandwich and a carton of milk. Others withhold lunch altogether. Some have even forced children to clean the tables after lunchtime.

One Seattle dad, Jeff Lew, was shocked when he learned about lunch shaming, so he decided to take matters into his own hands. He called up his son's Seattle school and found out that students there owed $97.10. Then, he created a GoFundMe campaign to pick up the tab. The campaign quickly raised the $97 for Lew's son's school, so he raised the bar: Could he raise enough to cover the $20,000 lunch debt in all Seattle public schools?

As it turns out, yes. So far, Lew's campaign has raised more than $45,000 to pay off lunch debt in the area. The campaign even got one especially large, $5,000 donation from someone who called himself "John Stephens."

Props to Legend for making this donation, and bonus props for doing it quietly without any fanfare. Props for Jeff Lew for taking the initiative to start this excellent campaign, and props to the more than 700 people who donated to it. Really, there's just a lot to feel good about here.

Of course, there are still a ton of kids out there with unpaid lunch bills. Lew's GoFundMe campaign is still live, so you can make a donation there yourself. Or, call up a local school and ask about helping pay off their lunch debt.